June 9, 2016

White Male Privilege – Rapist Apologists in a Rape Culture

Twenty-year-old Brock Allen Turner, Stanford University student and wannabe surgeon, has been found guilty of sexually assaulting an unconscious woman and sentenced. The jury heard about how the victim became incoherent within 20 minutes of arriving at a frat party and how Turner was later seen straddling her completely unconscious body behind a dumpster. The woman did not regain consciousness until 4:15 a.m., and had no memory of the assault.The crime occurred in January 2015, the trial last March, and the sentencing this week. For this crime, California law carried a sentence of two to 14 years in state prison.

At the trial, Turner said that the 23-year-old woman seemed to be enjoying his actions. Yet he tried to run away after two graduate students saw him. They caught and restrained him. Witnesses and physical evidence all refuted Turner’s claims. His court statement explained that drinking can ruin a person’s life and then called the victim “the cause” and himself “the effect.” The jury found Turner guilty of assault with intent to commit rape of an intoxicated person, sexually penetrating an intoxicated person with a foreign object, and sexually penetrating an unconscious person with a foreign object.

Law enforcement refused to publicly release Turner’s mug shot to the media until after a huge outcry. Instead Santa Clara County used his sentencing photo until forced to provide the original mug shot (below left). Media typically used his photos on the swim team or one (below right) that appears to have come from a yearbook. The procedure was in direct contrast to stories about black men accused of sexual assault that typically use mug shots.

Judge Aaron Persky, a past Stanford student and captain of the lacrosse team, sentenced Turner to six months in county jail and another three years of probation. The reasons? Turner is an All-American swimmer with Olympic dreams. He just made a mistake, and more than the sentence would have a “severe impact” on Turner’s future. The judge added that he didn’t believe that Turner would be of danger to others and that he’s young. Turner may be out of jail much sooner. He was sentenced on June 8, and his scheduled release date is September 2 of this year. While DA in Santa Clara County, Persky prosecuted sex crimes.

In a letter, Turner’s father wrote that any jail time was too harsh. He added, “This is a steep price to pay for 20 minutes of action out of his 20 years plus of life.” The father also suggested that Brock Turner work to warn students about the dangers of “promiscuity.” Michael Miller mourned in the Washington Post that “his extraordinary yet brief swim career is now tarnished, like a rusting trophy.” Other defenses from family members and friends were equally disgusting.

Turner’s sexual assault on an unconscious woman wasn’t really rape, according to his friend Leslie Rasmussen, who sent a letter of support for Turner to the judge. She wrote:

“I don’t think it’s fair to base the fate of the next ten + years of his life on the decision of a girl who doesn’t remember anything but the amount she drank to press charges against him. I am not blaming her directly for this, because that isn’t right. But where do we draw the line and stop worrying about being politically correct every second of the day and see that rape on campuses isn’t always because people are rapists.

“This is completely different from a woman getting kidnapped and raped as she is walking to her car in a parking lot. That is a rapist. These are not rapists. These are idiot boys and girls having too much to drink and not being aware of their surroundings and having clouded judgement [sic].”

After the backlash for her comments about her support for a rapist, Rasmusson (below right) has apologized. But her indie grunge-pop band Good English has lost its gigs, and the judge’s light sentence still stands.

The judge’s sentencing sent two powerful messages.

Color matters: Standout Vanderbilt football player, Cory Batey, was immediately remanded after raping an unconscious woman and got a sentence of 15 to 25 years; Brock Turner got six months for the same crime. Turner would probably not have been convicted at all if two Swedish graduate students hadn’t been riding by on their bicycles. Batey is black; Turner is white.

Campus rape doesn’t matter: Conservatives continue to blame women and their participation in the “hook-up culture” for their rapes while attacking colleges and universities for trying to decrease the number of sexual assaults on campus.

Turner defended himself on the rape charge by saying that he was drunk and couldn’t help himself. A Facebook post from Matt Lang explained what’s wrong with his defense:

“I’ve been drunk many times, even in the presence of promiscuous women who were also drunk, and I managed not to rape them, so I don’t think drinking and promiscuity are the problems. This here is the problem: some guys are entitled pricks, and they’re entitled pricks because their fathers and coaches and friends taught them to be entitled pricks. Because they are entitled pricks, they think they can have whatever they want, and that their worth is defined by what they have and what they take….

“Brock Turner and his ilk were never taught that [rape is wrong]. They were taught that they can have what they want, when they want, including women. And that’s called being a man. Brock Turner thought he was entitled to a little ‘action’ any way he could get it, and he thought that long before he got drunk. The alcohol didn’t introduce that thought, it unlocked it. That thought: ‘I can take whatever I want, including her,’ was planted and watered by a whole, rotten village.

“It is right that we shame him, and his father, and the friend who came to his defense, and the judge, and every other entitled prick we meet.

“Just as importantly, we need to love our boys, and teach them the dignity of the body, and how to live through disappointment and confusion, and how to navigate confusing feelings, and how to separate feelings from action, and how to communicate and listen. We need to redefine for them what it is to be a man, that their worth doesn’t come from that which they have and take.”

Thanks, Matt.

Over 100,000 people have signed a petition to recall Persky. The National Organization for Women has also published a letter endorsing this action. It is available here. Persky may think that six months in jail is a “severe impact,” but the real impact is the life-time sentences for all of the victims, especially the ones who no longer want to come forward about these crimes because of Turner’s light sentence. The only hope is that the country stay enraged about the actions of Turner, his supporters, and his judge.